Hardly a day goes by that Donald Trump doesn’t commit an impeachable offense. Among them is his attempt to intimidate broadcast networks into making their coverage of him more favorable and his opponents less favorable. He has filed a nonsense lawsuit against CBS, claiming that editing a Kamala Harris interview in a way he didn’t like constituted election interference. All the analysis I’ve read says the suit doesn’t stand a chance on its merits, but the government has the power to approve or block a merger CBS is seeking, and the implied threat to disallow it has CBS ready to fold. The FCC, under Trump appointee Brendan Carr, is also applying pressure. NPR says “CBS’ parent company appears to be inching toward capitulation, as its controlling owner wants to drag CBS out of the headlines and wrap up a corporate sale.”
Intimidation of broadcasters and websites is nothing new, but Trump has taken it to the worst levels since World War II. As communications lawyer Ronnie London has argued, a settlement by CBS would be a dangerous precedent. “Here, there is no peace to be bought, at least not without reassurance from the courts that CBS can cover political matters as its editorial discretion dictates, no matter how much it might displease the president or his appointees.”
It’s too soon for me to say this with confidence, but I get the impression that fewer news articles are using quick dismissals like “Trump falsely said that…” If it happened from a belated desire to separate news from editorializing, it could be a good thing, but if it’s motivated by fear or by loyalty to whoever is currently in power, it’s a cause for worry.
Trump wants to silence criticism. He has declared that “CBS should lose its license,” falsely implying that it operates by government permission rather than right.
A FIRE article discusses Trump’s habit of attempting legal intimidation of news sources.
Trump said he would be a dictator “only on day one,” but he was lying. He’s pursuing one-man rule. We can expect suppression or editing of news that’s unfavorable to Trump as his intimidation campaigns go on. The smaller news sources will be less affected than the big national ones; it’s harder to go after a lot of small targets. Not all of them are trustworthy, though. It will get steadily harder to find out the truth about what the government’s doing.
I’m not sure. Even seeing only the two broadcast clips, they could not be honest interpretations of the same interview. But “election interference” less likely appropriate than Trump’s New York conviction.
In other words, CBS should have either released the unedited tapes or retracted the broadcasts – but that’s an ethical “should”, not a legal “should”.